Vovinam - Canoga Park, CA

I am currently enrolled in Vovinam in Canoga Park.

Vovinam is a flashy Vietnamese martial arts - a normal vovinam school will focus a lot of attention to demonstration with flashy moves like jumping leg scissors and staged fights. Fortunately, this studio does very little of that. It is more in line of an open club; there are instructors who came from (and fluent in) kick boxing, taekwondo, wingchun, judo, and jiu jitsu. The primary training is more of a kick boxing class with judo and jiu jitsu supplement; the only part retained from Vovinam are forms and basic techniques required for a belt promotion.

The class is always high energy and extremely cheap; however, the draw back are too many kids, old equipments, and high ratio of students per instructor (average class is 30+ participants with 3 or 4 instructors).

However, the wide range of instruction is unlike any other studios i've participated in and the dedication of instructors is unsurpassed (all of them volunteered to teach without payment). Overall, a very decent place to train.

Second, aliveness refers to a degree of full contact sparring, a ten would be a full contact high quality MMA gym, I believe one of the American Top Team gyms qualified for a ten, but there have only been a handful of legit tens since the rating system started.

Please read the link I posted and rethink your ratings.

I do not aspire to be great, or even good, I hope to suck a little less then last class.

I rated according to the link... 6-7: Medium contact with excessive safety gear. The official (Vovinam) sparring rule at my school is: full-gear (body armor, close finger gloves (10oz), mouth and shin guard), no elbow, no knee, no groin or back of the neck attack, no small joints lock, take down without grappling, no attack when partner is down. Besides the Vovinam sparring team, there is also the MMA team; this team spars using official UFC rules and gears. However, because the facility is shared with 3 other martial arts classes, we cannot install a ring. $30 a month is definitely cheap. But since we share the studio with 3 other classes, rent is cheaper; and luckily, all of the instructor are well off and can afford to teach for free. $30 price is to make it affordable for local kids who are less fortunate than others - parents contribute by donating time or money. More on sparring, i don't believe any of the students have competed in an MMA match. But the Vovinam sparring team have competed in state, national, and international Vovinam competition. There are a few students who take WTF on the side and compete in city competition. [=

I understand. I have been to many classes that advertise they train with this or that person, or they say they train with this or that style/way... participate in the actual class and find out the truth been stretched into a sugar coated lie.